Maria Balderas, PhD, CCE

Associate Principal

Health Management Associates

Austin, TX

[javascript protected email address]

A data-driven, results-oriented executive, Maria Balderas has over 20 years of experience in healthcare. Her experience includes healthcare programs, policy, applied informatics, program evaluations, data collection, quantitative and qualitative analysis. Leveraging health information technology (HIT) and data analysis, Maria boosts quality of care, patient satisfaction and revenue generation. She is well versed in Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and Patient-centered Medical Home (PCMH) standards and quality reporting. She has an in-depth understanding of value-based programs, health policy strategy, quality improvement and population health.

Before joining Health Management Associates, Maria was a clinical informaticist and health policy lead for Merative, formerly IBM. There, Maria was the primary healthcare subject matter expert, aligning data and software products to value-based care practices and advising clients on products’ health policy value and capabilities through sales, integration and post-implementation. She also led teams in analyzing client clinical data for quality program reporting and directed clinical accreditation and licensing activities.

Maria drives strategic, innovative solutions using HIT, data analysis and applied informatics to meet short-term needs and long-range goals. With Merative, Maria built an internal health-informatics database that provided readily accessible documentation to client-facing teams, and she co-developed a reporting dashboard that enabled clients to achieve vendor-based auto-credit and validation of core criteria needed for annual National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) PCMH recognition renewals. She gained international experience as an on-site project liaison with the IBM Service Corps in Paraguay, supporting the transition to a digitized system for improving cancer surveillance and delivering a working synoptic pathology reporting prototype in four weeks. She also eliminated obstacles and issues regarding regulatory policies for health-related products with streamlined processes for alerting developers to health policy considerations.

While she applies her expertise to align products and programs to policy requirements, Maria also uses data findings and research to advance regulatory and policy change. As a program analyst with the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS), Office of the Inspector General (OIG), Maria conducted complex research, establishing evaluation objectives and methodologies by incorporating data collection strategies such as interviews, questionnaires, and onsite inspections. Her research resulted in recommendations to DHHS agencies as well as policy and regulatory changes. Throughout her career, she has led and contributed to numerous national studies, and her efforts have resulted in changes at national, state and local levels.

She continues to promote change, training other professionals, advising clients and teaching students health policy and public administration at several universities.

Maria earned her doctorate degree in public affairs from the University of Texas at Dallas. She has a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice and bachelor’s degrees in biology and criminology and criminal justice from the University of Texas at Arlington. Maria is a certified patient-centered medical home certified content expert (CCE) and a Lean Six Sigma white belt.

Maria enjoys jogging, reading and spending time with family – including her adopted pet tarantula, Audrey.